Pair- and Quad- Metalborn

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

I'm sure most people have wondered about or wished that there was more than just Mistings of a single metal and Mistborn with all the metals, or Ferrings and Full Feruchemists.

I can't say I know exactly why Brandon limited things to that (though I am aware of his magical philosophy that limitations are more interesting than powers, and I agree, they are), but every now and then I've found myself wondering what would happen if Metalborn could exist with a push/pull pair, or all 4 metals of a quadrant, or all the pulling metals, or all the pushing metals.

So I figured I'd make a topic where we can discuss which sets we'd want, or which ones you think are particularly powerful or interesting (tin/pewter pair, for example) or theorycrafting little things like what certain names would be for these hypothetical Metalborn.

 

If I had a push/pull pair of Allomantic metals, I'd probably go with Chromium/Nicrosil. Leeching is super useful against all kinds of Invested things, and Nicrobursting can be even more chaotic or helpful, depending on who you use it on, and whether you're coordinating the timing of the burst or trying to surprise them with it.

For feruchemy, even though they're not divided by push/pull & internal/external, I'd probably take the pair of... Well... Chromium and Nicrosil, actually. Fortune manipulation fascinates me, in general, and F-Nicrosil can be powerful and versatile under the right conditions.

 

So what would you pick, if you could have a set of Metalborn powers between Misting/Ferring and Mistborn/Full Feruchemist?

[Weltall]

F-Cadmium/Bendalloy if we're looking at pushing/pulling pairs. Going without needing to breathe for long periods of time could be useful in all sorts of circumstances (I dive, so I can easily imagine ways you could have a lot of fun with that power) and being able to store nutrition is one of those things where tapping and storing are equally useful. Store while eating/drinking and gain no weight (at least, no weight that stays in the body longer than a day or two) and tap when you're hungry/thirsty and don't have ready access to food. Actually, once unsealed metalminds and compounding become more common I wouldn't be surprised if both those metals become important in Era 4, with F-Cadmium being useful as an emergency oxygen supply (or reducing the bulk of a spacesuit by not requiring a purely mechanical tank) and F-Bendalloy similarly allowing a ship to carry all the nutrition its crew needs in a tiny fraction of the mass.

Oh, and A-Iron/Steel for allomancy because both powers are cool and useful on their own and using them together would be even moreso with practice. I like to think of the combination as the 'Allomantic Spiderman' pairing. Though I guess you'd also need A/F-Tin for the full package... or possibly F-Chromium depending on how that works.

[Karger he/him]

A-Cadmium/Bendalloy.  As much time as you want when you want it is pretty much my dream.

I honestly think the pushing metals are generally better then the pulling ones alomantically as well.

For the quad I want temporal

I am very interested in compounding the mental metals but for the most part we don't know the real effects.

 

Edited January 1, 2020 by Ookla the Prolific

[Honorless he/him]

For Allomancy push/pull pair I would take Atium and Malatium if I could. If not then Chromium and Nicrosil (assuming I'd be in era 2 Scadrial). If I'm still on Earth, I'd prefer Gold (because we all second guess our choices anyway, might as well know) and Electrum (aka poor man's Atium), but dang it those are costly! So Zinc and Brass might be better.

For Feruchemy push/pull pair... this one's more difficult to choose. I want Gold but not Electrum, so let's put that aside.  Zinc and Brass could be useful for my strange, strange brain and this strange, strange weather. Iron and Steel are tempting too, while Copper and Bronze are what all students dream of. Cadmium and Bendalloy are also very nice, one could be a lifesaver in emergencies, the other as well, in addition to being a nice for uh... guilty eating. There's too much to choose from!

For all pushing/all pulling Allomantic metals I would go with Pushing metals for Electrum and Bendalloy primarily, but also for Brass and Steel which I think I'd be more comfortable with than their counterparts, Nicrosil and Seeker seem more suited to me as well. I don't think this classification fits Feruchemical abilities so passing on that.

For Allomantic quartet, I'd go with... hmm... another difficult choice. Bendalloy kind of scares me, Gold is less useful, Aluminium and Duralumin are significantly more useful for full Mistborn but the thought of a Duralumin enhanced Nicroburst is quite exciting! I'll go with Enhancement quartet.

For Feruchemical quartet, I choose... why is this so difficult!? Some are so useful for both storing and tapping, some are very useful but storing them would not be a great experience and the metals seem mismatched in the quartets! I actually can't pick for this one... but I can tell you that I'd be happy to have any of them and jealous of any that I don't!

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

A Iron/Steel. Who doesn’t want to fly? And F Iron/Steel because: 1) compounding! And 2) I’m always late. Also 3: Wax demonstrates well how F Iron pairs nicely with A Steel and Iron. So really useful all around. 

Also one of the more dangerous combinations, but that wasn’t why I picked it. (I want to fly+ I’m always late. And Iron is the other half of steel, so that came along on the Feruchemy side.)

[Elsecaller_17.5 he/him]

Double Zinc and Double Steel for unlimited mental and physical speed plus two of the most useful allomantic metals.

For a pair I'd want A zinc and brass a quad I'd pick the mental.

F pair I have go with . . . zinc and brass, and the mental quadrant. 

I just really like zinc ok!

[Karger he/him]

33 minutes ago, Truthwatcher_17.5 said:

I just really like zinc ok!

I do too but I am worried about potential side effects.

[Elsecaller_17.5 he/him]

6 hours ago, Ookla the Prolific said:

I do too but I am worried about potential side effects.

I assume your talking about the potential downsides of compounding. That is a concern but not a huge one to me. Miles appeared to be able to entirely negate the side effects by constantly tapping and zinc is a lot easier to get a hold of then gold.

But yeah being braindead without zinc is a scary thought.

[Karger he/him]

44 minutes ago, Truthwatcher_17.5 said:

But yeah being braindead without zinc is a scary thought.

Also tapping makes you hungry.

[StanLemon]

Going by Push/Pull pairs, as much as I love Steel and Iron, I would have to go for the sheer practicality of Tin and Pewter.

[Honorless he/him]

On 1/2/2020 at 7:52 AM, Ookla the Prolific said:

Also tapping makes you hungry.

wait what?

[Karger he/him]

1 hour ago, Honorless said:

wait what?

It is a weird side effect but it is mentioned in BoM. 

[Honorless he/him]

Just now, Ookla the Prolific said:

It is a weird side effect but it is mentioned in BoM. 

Are you sure they weren't just normal hungry? Sazed never mentioned any such effect

[Karger he/him]

57 minutes ago, Honorless said:

Are you sure they weren't just normal hungry? Sazed never mentioned any such effect

It is in chapter three.   I just added it to the coppermind page because it was not there before.

Quote

...or why tapping mental speed tends to make one hungry, of all things...

 

Edited January 5, 2020 by Ookla the Prolific

[+robardin he/him]

I think the "tapping a zincmind made you hungry" bit is simply based on the fact that doing sustained, heavy duty thinking actually burns more calories than sitting on a stool, slack-jawed and vacant-eyed. In ordinary life it's not at all close to the same extent as physical exertion, but if you tap a zincmind and are suddenly thinking 16x faster than normal, then compressing 16 minutes of serious thinking into a single minute might well be a sudden drain your sugar levels.

[Karger he/him]

6 hours ago, robardin said:

I think the "tapping a zincmind made you hungry" bit is simply based on the fact that doing sustained, heavy duty thinking actually burns more calories than sitting on a stool, slack-jawed and vacant-eyed. In ordinary life it's not at all close to the same extent as physical exertion, but if you tap a zincmind and are suddenly thinking 16x faster than normal, then compressing 16 minutes of serious thinking into a single minute might well be a sudden drain your sugar levels.

This was my assumption as well.

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

6 hours ago, robardin said:

I think the "tapping a zincmind made you hungry" bit is simply based on the fact that doing sustained, heavy duty thinking actually burns more calories than sitting on a stool, slack-jawed and vacant-eyed. In ordinary life it's not at all close to the same extent as physical exertion, but if you tap a zincmind and are suddenly thinking 16x faster than normal, then compressing 16 minutes of serious thinking into a single minute might well be a sudden drain your sugar levels.

Actually, a significant portion of our daily calories are used to fuel the brain. 300 calories out of an average of 1300 consumed, are consumed by the brain. +/- 20-50 depending.

So if you condense several hours worth of thought into seconds, then it makes sense that you’ll get hungry!

[+robardin he/him]

21 hours ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

Actually, a significant portion of our daily calories are used to fuel the brain. 300 calories out of an average of 1300 consumed, are consumed by the brain. +/- 20-50 depending.

So if you condense several hours worth of thought into seconds, then it makes sense that you’ll get hungry!

True, but a lot of that 300 calories happens just because you're alive - I was talking about the increase from a resting state to a "CPU-pegging" level of thinking, and then tapping zinc is like super overclocking the CPU. A lot of what the brain does, it does even while you sit there drooling, making your heart pump and processing your sensory inputs and so on. 

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

1 hour ago, robardin said:

True, but a lot of that 300 calories happens just because you're alive - I was talking about the increase from a resting state to a "CPU-pegging" level of thinking, and then tapping zinc is like super overclocking the CPU. A lot of what the brain does, it does even while you sit there drooling, making your heart pump and processing your sensory inputs and so on. 

True, but regular hard thinking will burn an extra 20-50 calories a day. Zinc multiples that exponentially, so you would use a lot more energy when you use it. So you’d be hungry after.

Most of the brain does not actually take care of life functions. Only the brain stem; that’s why there can be a total cessation of consciousness but the body can keep living. The more focused a task, the less energy is expended. The brain stem is very focused on certain functions, so it needs less energy to work.

The cerebral cortex is where most of the conscious processing takes place, so is probably the part of the brain that uses the most calories. https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5400025/does-thinking-burn-calories/%3famp=true

This link has a fairly simple explanation of it. It’s not that you are thinking faster; its that you are processing input at an increased rate. The processing of sensory/situational input is what is actually burning calories. 

Edited January 7, 2020 by Kingsdaughter613